“Or a Saint,” he amended, “rescuing a beautiful dame from a bunch of lugs.”
And there was, of course, the jewel.
It had a history. The fire opal, which seemed to be eternal yet living beauty, had carved upon it the likeness of Dawn’s great-great-grandmother, of whom the girl was the living image.
The talented Oriental craftsman who had chiseled those features which were the essence of beauty — that wily fellow had breathed upon the cameo gem a curse.
The curse: It must not get out of the possession of the family — or else.
Death, deprivation, and a myriad other unpleasantries were predicted if the stone fell into alien hands.
The name of Selden Appopoulis sort of slithered into the tale. This was a fat man, a lecherous fat man, a greedy fat man, who wanted — not loved — Dawn, and who wanted — and loved — the cameo opal. In some fashion that was not exactly clear to the Saint, the fat man was in a position to put a financial squeeze on her. In each succeeding dream of Andrew Faulks, Glendale bank clerk, Dawn’s position became more and more untenable. In desperation she finally agreed to turn the jewel over to Appopoulis. The fat man sent for the jewel by the two henchmen whom the Saint had directed off into the Holbrook-bare woods.
“Now in this dream — this here now dream,” Holbrook said, “I took it away from him, see? Andy Faulks went to sleep in Glendale Saturday night and — say, what day is it now?”
“Tuesday.”
“Yeah, that’s the way it seems to me too. And that’s funny. If you’re really part of this dream you’d naturally think it was Tuesday, because your time and my time would be the same. But you don’t seem like part of a dream. I pinched you and — oh, nuts, I’m all mixed up.”
“Let’s try and be clear about this,” said the Saint patiently. “You know that it’s Tuesday here, but you think you’re dreaming all this in Glendale on Saturday night.”
“I don’t know,” said the other wearily. “You see, I never dreamed more than one day at a stretch before. But tonight it’s been going on and on. It’s gone way past the time when I ought to have woken up. But I don’t seem to be able to wake up. I’ve tried... My God, suppose I don’t wake up! Suppose I never can wake up? Suppose I never can get back, and I have to go on and on with this, being Big Bill Holbrook—”
“You could take a trip to Glendale,” Simon suggested gravely, “and try waking Faulks up.”
Holbrook-Faulks stared at him with oddly unfocused eyes.
“I can’t,” he said huskily. “I thought of that — once. But I couldn’t make myself do it. I... I’m scared... of what I might find... Suppose—”
He broke off, his pupils dilated with the formless horror of a glimpse of something that no mind could conceive.
Simon roused him again, gently: “So you took the jewel—”
Holbrook snapped out of his reverie.
“Yeah, and I lammed out for this cabin. Dawn was supposed to meet me here. But I guess I can’t control all these characters. Say,” he asked suddenly, “who do you suppose I am? Faulks or Holbrook?”
“I suggest you ask your mother, old boy.”
“This ain’t funny. I mean, who do you really suppose I am? Andy Faulks is asleep and dreaming me but I’ve got all his memories, so am I a projection of Andy or am I me and him both? None of these other characters have any more memories than they need.”
Simon wondered if the two men chasing Holbrook were his keepers; he could use a few. In fact, Simon reflected, keepers would fit into the life of Holbrook-Faulks like thread in a needle. But he sipped his brandy and urged the man to continue.
“Well, something’s happened,” Holbrook-Faulks said. “It never was like this before. I never could smell things before. I never could really feel them. You know how it is in a dream. But now it seems like as if you stuck a knife in me I’d bleed real blood. You don’t suppose a... a reiterated dream could become reality?”
“I,” said the Saint, “am a rank amateur in that department.”
“Well, I was too — or Andy was, whichever of us is me — but I read everything I could get my hands on about dreams — or Andy did — and it didn’t help a bit.”
Most men wouldn’t have heard the faint far-off stirring in the forest. But the Saint’s ears, attuned by long practice to detect sound that differed from what should be there, picked up evidence of movement toward the cabin.
“Some one,” he said suddenly, “and I mean one, is coming. Not your pursuers — it’s from the opposite direction.”
Holbrook-Faulks listened.
“I don’t hear anything.”
“I didn’t expect you to — yet. Now that it’s dark, perhaps you’d better slip outside, brother, and wait. I don’t pretend to believe your yarn, but that some game is afoot is so obvious that even Sherlock Holmes could detect it. I suggest that we prepare for eventualities.”
The eventuality that presently manifested itself was a girl. And it was a girl who could have been no one but Dawn Winter.
She came wearily into the cabin, disheveled, her dress torn provocatively so that sun-browned flesh showed through, her cloud of golden hair swirled in fairy patterns, her dark eyes brooding, her mouth a parted dream.
The Saint caught his breath and began to wonder whether he could really make Big Bill Holbrook wake up and vanish.
“Do you belong to the coffee and/or brandy school of thought?” he asked.
“Please.” She fell carelessly into a chair, and the Saint coined a word.
She was glamorous beyond belief.
“Miss Winter, pull down your dress or I’ll never get this drink poured. You’ve turned me into an aspen. You’re the most beautiful hunk of flesh I’ve ever seen. Have your drink and go, please.”
She looked at him then, and took in the steel-cable leanness of him, the height of him, the crisp black hair, the debonair blue eyes. She smiled, and a brazen gong tolled in the Saint’s head.
“Must I?” she said.
Her voice caught at the core of desire and tangled itself forever there.
“Set me some task,” the Saint said uncertainly. “Name me a mountain to build, a continent to sink, a star to fetch you in the morning.”
The cabin door crashed open. The spell splintered into shining shards. Holbrook-Faulks stood stony-faced against the door.
“Hello, Bill,” the girl said, her eyes still on the Saint. “I came, you see.”
Bill’s gaze was an unwavering lance, with the Saint pinioned on its blazing tip.
“Am I gonna have trouble with you too, Saint?”
The Saint opened his mouth to answer, and stiffened as another sound reached his ears. Jockey and weight lifter were returning.
“We’ll postpone any jousting over the fair lady for the moment,” Simon said. “We’re about to have more company.”
Holbrook stared wildly around.
“Come on, Dawn. Out the window. They’ll kill us.”
Many times before in his checkered career the Saint had had to make decisions in a fragment of time — when a gun was leveled and a finger whitening on the trigger, when a traffic accident roared toward consummation, when a ship was sinking, when a knife flashed through candlelight. His decision now was compounded of several factors, none of which was the desire for self-preservation. The Saint rarely gave thought room to self-preservation — never when there was something more important to preserve.
He did not want this creature of tattered loveliness, this epitome of what men live for, to get out of his sight. He must therefore keep her inside the cabin. And there was no place to hide...
His eyes narrowed as he looked at the two bunks. He was tearing out the mattresses before his thought was fully formed. He tossed the mattresses in a corner where shadows had retreated from the candle on the table. Then he motioned to Holbrook.